SOURCE: "Westworld, Futureworld, and the World's Obscenity," in State of the Fantastic: Studies in the Theory and Practice of Fantastic Literature and Film, edited by Nicholas Ruddick, Greenwood Press, 1990, pp. 179-88.

Telotte is an American critic and educator who frequently writes about film and film history: his works include Dreams of Darkness: Fantasy and the Films of Val Lewton (1985) and Voices in the Dark: The Narrative Patterns of Film Noir (1989). In the following essay, he utilizes key concepts from French philosopher and sociologist Jean Baudrillard in an examination of how Westworld and its seguel, Futureworld, portray the dangers of living in a technological society where the boundaries between reality and fantasy break down.

The schizo is bereft of every scene, open to everything in spite of himself, living in the greatest confusion. He is himself obscene, the obscene prey of the world's obscenity. What...